


God Eyes

by asha noir (Kanja)



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Bad Romance, Depression, Loneliness, M/M, Two broken people being broken together, descriptions of genocide, exotification, mentions of cannibalism, mentions of drug use, mentions of medical torture, two people trying to grow up under intense scrutiny, we'll get to smut I'm sure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanja/pseuds/asha%20noir
Summary: Sephiroth thinks that he has a clue as to what Tseng means to show him, but he quickly rules it out. And then he turns, sees the look on Tseng's face, and rules it right back in again."Oh," he says, shaking his head, "no."
Relationships: Sephiroth/Tseng (Compilation of FFVII)
Kudos: 24





	God Eyes

Sephiroth first sees Tseng in a mandatory remedial class. They've been raised in the same building together for practically their entire lives, but the first day of that class, Sephiroth turns around in his chair and meets the eyes of the person sitting behind him and some sort of dark magic happens. He doesn't remember a single thing about that day except that boy sitting behind him with the dark-eyed gaze that met his, bold and unflinching. Considering who Sephiroth is, it makes an impression. 

//

Sephiroth gets his first good look at him the next day, before class. They're both early, standing out in the hallway, quietly awaiting the arrival of their professor. Tseng looks at him like he's trying to read something off of Sephiroth's face. 

"What?" Sephiroth finally asks, face burning. He isn't sure why; the heat stands at the tip of his nose and radiates. He's so used to being looked at, it has been a very, very long time since he's blushed. 

Tseng crosses his arms. Since he is looking at Sephiroth, Sephiroth looks at him. What he sees is shadow, cut and cornered. Neat angles and lines. And then faintly honeyed skin, lilting dark eyes, and soft, swooping hair, heavy as the night sky and barely contained by a glittering silver clip. The mark between his brows intrigues him. He immediately wants to avert his eyes again. 

"Follow me," Tseng says. Sephiroth thinks that he can see him smiling, but he isn't sure. "I want to show you something."

Tseng takes him into the classroom and stands him before the window. Quietly, he lifts the glass plate, and then the screen. Sephiroth looks out, trying to see what he sees. 

The world beyond their pale gray walls is loud and lively and beautiful. The sun is just setting, Midgar has just turned on her lights. She is a sea of orange and violet, with fireflies burning in her belly. He sees cars blurring, trains roaring. He can see everything from here. 

Swiftly, Tseng grabs a fistful of his hair and forces him to look down. 

Ah. That's it. 

Down below, there is a generator cell forming a solid steel platform. The end of it just so happens to perfectly align with the window they've opened. Sephiroth thinks that he has a clue as to what Tseng means to show him, but he quickly rules it out. Surely no one could be so unhinged as to think that is a good idea. And then he turns, sees the look on Tseng's face, and rules it right back in again. 

"Oh," he says, shaking his head, "no."

//

Sephiroth smokes his first cigarette there, dipped in moonlight and leaned against Tseng's shoulder. They're black-papered cloves and they taste like a voyage to somewhere unknown. Sephiroth likes the way it makes his lips taste like vanilla. He licks his lips often, and Tseng watches him, every time. 

It becomes the one place where Shinra can't follow them. Sephiroth starts to forget the vertigo. It feels natural to be so unsheltered from gravity. He has lived his whole life in looming towers and never once felt it like this: immediate and impressive, lulling like a siren song. The edge of the platform becomes his favorite place. His stomach doesn't even flip when he hangs his legs over the edge. 

The last time it does, he is toeing the edge. He feels hands at his back, but before he can move, they wind around him. He teeters on his heels. 

"Afraid?" Tseng asks. Sephiroth feels pressure driving him forward. 

It's terrifying. He doesn't know why he's smiling. "Yes," he says. 

//

They seek out other places where Shinra can't see them. Tseng finds them all. Little grottos of strung-together shanties where everyone sits on their porches, smoking and cackling. Plate-top alleys that stretch for miles and turn into one big, churning stomach of people and stands and fragrances Sephiroth's nose cannot place. 

And then there are places like these, well-concealed inside abandoned-looking buildings in the factory district, bare-faced with broken windows and stripped brickwork. Within, they come alive, a phantasmagoria of strobing lights and writhing bodies. The music is unlike any Sephiroth has ever heard before, the DJ's voice climbs and climbs but Sephiroth doesn't recognize the words. He already feels dizzy before Tseng steps up to him and slips a tab on to his tongue. 

"Afraid?" he asks again. 

Tseng has his arms draped across Sephiroth's shoulder. They're swaying when he begins to feel the music beneath his skin, deep within his chest. He lies: "Yes."

His world and all his senses become color. Violet and indigo, blurred and sweeping like contrails in the night sky, but always, always, framed by the comforting black of his favorite shadow. He wants to press his face into its darkness and go blind forever. 

That night, Sephiroth decides to stop in the middle of their walk home and lay in the center of the street. It's too late for there to be very many cars, but they will come. All he knows is that his brain is fuzzy and it doesn't matter. The world is very big and they are very small and so nothing really matters at all.

"Get up," Tseng says. There is nothing there, no urgency, no sense that he actually cares whether or not Sephiroth gets creamed by oncoming traffic. In this state, his thoughts are raw and honest, and it bothers him more than he knows how to explain. 

"I will not," Sephiroth tells him. 

Nothing again. Tseng looks the same as he always does. He looks at Sephiroth the same way he looks at the screens in class: studious, yet detached. 

"Is that what you've decided?" he asks. 

"I will not get up," Sephiroth says, "unless you kiss me."

Nothing again. _It's okay_ , he tells himself. This is a necessary hurt. This will excise the bigger hurt that could be, before it has a chance to fester. 

But then Tseng steps closer. He drops to his knees on the road. He leans over Sephiroth and clutches the front of his shirt tightly as he closes his mouth over his lips. Sephiroth cannot tell if it is stars or headlights that he is seeing, but he doesn't care at all. Their lips press together so hard that it burns when they part. 

They kiss on the train back home, too. They linger in the station, tangled around each other, freezing in the early autumn cold, but neither of them dares mention it. Sephiroth cannot bring himself to: for a moment, it feels like he's found the answer to every single question he's ever asked. 

In the morning, he wonders what will have changed. He doesn't even begin to consider the most heart-breaking contingency of all: nothing. 

They meet, they smoke, they talk. Sephiroth keeps up his end of the conversation half-heartedly, waiting for any sign that it will turn toward the way they ended last night. Tseng never mentions it, and Sephiroth feels vertigo again for the first time all year as his heart falls and falls and falls. 

Later that week, he has a new laboratory trial. When he was younger, it felt like he had a sense of agency, keeping up with what tests were for which purpose, where his samples were going, to what end each study was aimed at. Now that he's older, he realizes that there's little point in trying to keep up. He knows they're withholding information from him. He knows that even if he objects, they will coerce or outright force him to participate anyway. It's less effort for everyone involved if he doesn't ask questions. 

But this is a new one. He'll be in a tank overnight, suspended in a new cocktail of insidious chemicals that all of the white coats are not at liberty to divulge. He doesn't dare ask Hojo. Hojo has only ever told him things he doesn't want to know. 

They meet before his trial. Now, they stand on the balcony outside the green, smoking and leaned together in the open. Tseng is watching the way Sephiroth's fingers make his cigarette waver, and Sephiroth knows it. 

"Afraid?" he asks. 

Sephiroth crushes his cigarette. "What the hell do you care?"

He looks up at Tseng to confirm what he already knows. There is nothing there. Tseng has always ever been a canvas that he did not realize he was painting. 

He takes a step away. 

"Something is trying you," Tseng says. 

Sephiroth's fists clench. "You kissed me."

"You told me to," Tseng replies automatically.

"That's it, then," Sephiroth says heavily. "That's all I needed to know." 

The mako cocktail flows into Sephiroth's lungs like lava later. Burning from within and unable to scream, Sephiroth feels the agony inside match up to the screaming hurt under his skin, and passes into darkness at peace. 

//

He is unconscious in his tank, but he does not rest. When they pull him from it, his mind is heavy with exhaustion, his limbs leaden weights. Still, he has to endure one procedure after the next, wavering as he stands upon the scale, head bowing as men in white coats pry into his tender ears and mouth. A kind-looking woman offers him a bag of chips from the vending machine as she ties up his arm to draw blood. He expends the last, bitter dregs of his energy forcing a smile for her. It is important to him that he acknowledge every humane gesture the scientists show to him. All he wants is to be treated like a person. All he ever wants is that. 

Afterwards, she frowns at his sample. He asks, "Is something wrong?"

She shakes her head and walks away without a word. Sephiroth is left feeling stiff, hollowed. There is an anger within him that flares, more terrifying than anything he has ever known. It comes from within and it seizes him. Much like the tests, the scientists, this lab, it makes him feel powerless. 

When this happens, he tries to picture his mother. Jenova, he decided long ago, has long, sweeping silver hair, just like his own. But her green eyes are big and kind. Her voice is soft and soothing. Her hands are gentle and cool; they have never caused hurt, but they are capable of undoing any pain. She is the hero that he has always needed. He feels calm when he thinks of her. 

His heart rate mellows—and then sputters erratic again once he steps into the hall. 

"How did you get here?"

Tseng does not have clearance for this floor. Sephiroth has to have his renewed for each procedure himself. And yet Tseng steps out of the shadows of the corridor like he belongs there, like he belongs anywhere the light does not reach. 

Tseng offers him no answer. Instead, he turns. He looks over his shoulder as if he expects Sephiroth to follow. 

_I won't_ , Sephiroth thinks. _Not this time_. And then he does. 

//

It has been two years since they've slipped out of the window to perch upon their overlook. Doing so now feels almost childish, reckless. They are old enough that they are free to come and go as they please, but Sephiroth knows that Tseng brought him here for a reason. Nothing he ever does is without premeditation. His heart pounds, hopeful despite the dull ache of anger in his chest. He is not ready to forgive, but he is also not yet ready to go back to being all alone. 

Tseng is quiet for a long time. Sephiroth asks him questions: _Why here? What do you want? Do you even want_ anything _?_

He is quiet as Sephiroth paces. He lets him run himself ragged. The anger wells up; it fuses with his hurt, his discomfort, his sadness, and becomes a bigger beast. 

"You have taken _everything_. I've nothing left to give, and yet you demand more, no matter how little of me remains." He isn't sure that he's speaking to Tseng anymore. Again, he has become a canvas. Sephiroth can hardly bring himself to care. Perhaps a canvas is precisely what he needs. "Last night, this morning, my whole life— I'm so tired. I'm so _fucking tired_. And there is no one who cares to see it. No one ever cares to see me at all."

The bitter dregs of his anger leave him with a ragged sigh. He is not so sure anymore that he feels anything but exhaustion. 

And throughout it all, the ranting rage, the howling pain, the quiet surrender, Tseng watches him. Emotionless, but not cold. Observant, but not malicious. 

Finally, Sephiroth takes his seat by Tseng's side. His boots drop over the edge. Their shoulders gently collide. Gradually, his breathing slows to match Tseng's. 

"Once," Tseng tells him, when Sephiroth has been silent for some time, "there was a boy with god eyes." 

Tseng is the painter, this time. Sephiroth closes his eyes and from the black, Tseng summons explosions of vivid color. He sees the squat, sloped roof of a monastery, its sky-blue door. He brings to life the fragrance of the incense, the palpable thrum of the monks chanting in unison. And in the center of it all, Sephiroth sees a little boy with eyes too wise and wide open. He understands innately, without Tseng having to say a word, the way they look at him with reverence, at once holding him up high and isolating him from all the rest. His loneliness resounds in the pit of Sephiroth's throat. 

Sephiroth sees him bowed in meditation. He marvels over every brightly-pigmented grain of sand in the mandalas that he paints. And again, he sees himself in that boy when he is sparring, checking his own strength, his speed, just to feel what it is like to be normal, searching for someone who will see him as the boy he is behind his eyes. All worth it for that one, bittersweet moment that never, ever comes. 

"And then..." Tseng says, and the world in Sephiroth's mind goes gray. 

Fog surrounds the island. Apparitions appear beyond the shore—looming, nightmare creatures that twist and morph into vast, steel behemoths. Sephiroth's blood runs cold as warships manifest from the gloom. The men who step upon the island's shores are familiar to him, with their red-paneled armor, their curved swords, the gold-leafed leviathans emblazoned across their formidable breastplates. For so many years, he has been indoctrinated by every mentor he has ever known, taught to associate them with evil, with the enemy. 

Tseng gives him the first real reason he has to hate them. 

Some of the monks meet them at the shore. They are silent, respectful, solemn. They do not lift a hand as they are cut down—

"They've all been trained to fight," Sephiroth interjects. "Why—"

"This was not their fight," Tseng tells him. 

Sephiroth opens his mouth, to protest once again, but finds suddenly that he understands. It is not what he would do, but he knows them now, in his mind and through Tseng's careful crafting of this world, and so he is quiet. 

Still, Tseng waits for him to speak. He does not resume until Sephiroth closes his eyes again, silent. 

"They've no choice but to run," Tseng says. "The gods that the boy sees are not the right ones. For as long as he lives, he will never be safe. And so they take him, one hundred strong, and they run."

Sephiroth shivers miserably in the cold, wet sea air. His stomach churns violently at the rocking of their flimsy sea vessel. But he is only glad for solid ground for a minute; soon, his feet are aching, blistering. He walks until he is so tired that he can hardly stand, and then he keeps walking, because to be held up once more by these people who have always held him would be unbearable. 

The desert sun torments them, offering them no reprieve from its caustic rays. He chews grass in the plains to keep the acidic pain in his stomach at bay. But nothing, nothing, is as terrible as the mountains. 

They lose men during their journey, sometimes only days apart, if they are truly unfortunate. But in the mountains, the cold takes two or three a day. Their sandals sink into the snow and slip over the ice. The cold buries under their skin and freezes their blood. The men that the boy trusts begin to babble senselessly. Their hunger consumes them. Their faces become glittering snowfields of frozen tears. 

The boy carries them when they fall. He learns to put his head down and walk, one step after another, meditating solely on the rhythm of his progress. He discovers one day that the man on his back has been dead all along. He fashions rope from reeds and drags the others along behind them. In the quiet of the night, he cuts flesh from the dead. In the morning, he feeds it to those who survive to see the rising of the sun. They no longer look at him with reverence—they no longer look at him at all. 

It does not matter. He tries anything and everything to ensure that someone survives with him, no matter the cost. 

In the end, no one does. The gods that grant him passage also condemn him to solitude. 

Tseng's hands feel so cold when Sephiroth's fingers slip over them. He tries to squeeze his warmth into them, but he knows that he can never make a fire large enough to ward off the chill forever. 

"Whatever you see," Sephiroth tells him, "this time, it is wrong."

Tseng does not smile, but shadows collect at the corners of his lips, flickering like guttering candles. 

"Oh?"

"Let me show you," he says, and his eyes are wide open when they meet Tseng's, godly and omniscient in their own right, "how things are truly meant to be." 

**Author's Note:**

> La la la I've been writing this for forever but you wouldn't know it. Just a bunch of ideas that have been rattling around in my head thanks to a pretty girl I know, but it's hard writing anything these days.
> 
> Kudos and comments are SUPER appreciated in these crazy times. I wanna get this next chapter out soon and a little hype goes a long way! Thank you soooo so much for reading this far—you're so awesome and I 'ppreciate ya.


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